


getting heavy

by deniigiq



Series: Dumpster Fires Verse [18]
Category: Daredevil (TV), Deadpool - All Media Types, Spider-Man: Homecoming (2017)
Genre: Emotional Hurt, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Missions Gone Wrong, Misunderstandings, Past Child Abuse, Protectiveness, Team Dynamics, Team Red, Team as Family, Trauma, Wade's just over here doing his best yo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-07
Updated: 2018-09-07
Packaged: 2019-07-08 02:27:20
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con, Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,317
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15921000
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/deniigiq/pseuds/deniigiq
Summary: Wade climbed up on the bar, while Weasel swore at him, and whistled to get people’s attention. It came, more or less undivided.“Hey, any of you fucks lay one on Spiderman?” he called.(Wade tries to track down someone he thinks hurt Peter.)





	getting heavy

**Author's Note:**

> hi, hello. This is a continuation of state your business, so you may want to read that one first to understand what exactly is going on here. 
> 
> Thanks to the lovely people who fanned this particular fire in the comments of the last fic!

So they were a bunch of fucked up souls, Wade could deal with that shit. He had years of practice being a mass murdering fuckhead. And he could deal with Red and his hush-hush secrets-secrets life situation.

What he couldn’t deal with was the thought that someone had gotten their grimy mitts on the kid.

That was unacceptable.

Intolerable.

There was an impulse there that added l’il Pete to Wade’s list of people he needed to research. It wasn’t a physical list because Wade was far too paranoid to leave shit like that laying around. But it was a list and it consisted of, at present, four targets, then Cap (purely research, he swore, nothing to do with that ass), then the Widow (just for future reference), and now Spidey.

He stowed the list in his subconscious and waited for an opportune moment to sit and have a think.

It didn’t come for a while because some punk was trying to fuck with Dopinder of all people and only Wade and Weasel were allowed to pick on the guy.

Then it didn’t come because there was a flurry of political activity which apparently required everyone everywhere to hire bodyguards to beat the shit out of each other while their clients and targets mingled at their fancy galas and pretended they all weren’t actively trying to murder each other.

And then it didn’t come because of fucking Labor Day and Wade deserved a goddamn break, yo.

The moment finally arrived in the fall, after Red had had to go to the hospital (the actual hospital, lord save them) having had someone set his fucking office building on fire. Red, ever the hero, had gotten out just to go back in to grab a kid stuck in the neighboring orthodontics office and had ended up with severe smoke inhalation and second and third degree burns.

Not even his smooth talking could convince the paramedics not to take him to the hospital for a check-up. And then no doctor on staff could, in good conscious, let a burnt blind man with more black and blue under his collar than pink leave their supervision untreated.

Red’s cool calm lawyer façade finally cracked thanks to whatever shit vibes the hospital was putting out. He had proceeded to lose his goddamn mind and put up a fight like no other upon arrival, and so now was laying, angry and restrained, on a bed while Nelson tried to convince a team of doctors and social workers that, no, he (Nelson) had not in fact abused his partner, and yes, he (Red) had always had this kind of extreme aversion to medical treatment, and no, nothing in particular was going on that might lead him (Nelson) to think foul play was afoot.

Red did Nelson no favors by dislocating his thumb and trying to jump out a 4th floor window.

So anyways, yes. Wade was currently sitting pretty, guarding Red, under the cover of having been hired by Nelson to keep him safe from whoever had set fire to his office. The docs were confused, but given the fire and police departments’ diagnoses that the blaze had started with an unhappy plaintiff trying to get an extremely poorly made bomb into Murdock’s office, they didn’t put up too much of a fight.

Red kept grabbing for Wade’s fingers like a sweet, gentle request for help, but Wade had learned after the second time that what he really wanted was something to crush in his grip to express his displeasure. Nelson had, ingeniously, gotten around this by shoving stuffed “get well soon” teddy bears into the hands when they reached for him.

When Red grabbed at him this time, Wade employed the Nelson method and let him growl at the teddy bear before throwing it to the floor with as much force as his cuffed hands would allow.

Wade watched him punish the bear and then remembered the list.

He had time. And he had Red.

“Hey so, remember that heart-to-hear you had with Pete the other day,” he asked casually.

Red snapped his attention to him in fury at the fact that he could no longer reach the bear to punish it. Wade picked it up and gave it back to him to torture and he got slightly less murderous.

“You happen to know who exactly he was talking about, about the whole, you know—”

“You were there, shithead, he didn’t say.”

Well.

Shitty attitudes like that get defenseless people wet willies.

Red was not cowed by the consequences of his behavior.

“I don’t fucking know, Wade,” he spat, “Everything he said is exactly what I know. So shove off.”

Not useful. He let Red fuck up the bandages on his arms while trying to wrestle his wrists out of the cuffs for a while.

“Okay, but let’s say hypothetically, you had two degrees and a teeny tiny fragment of sense in your head. Who would you _think_ —”

“FUCK OFF.”

Red was not in a thinking mood, evidently. He was drawing attention from others.

Wade leaned over him so anyone looking from behind saw a giant assassin tenderly comforting the poor, heroic, blind burn victim. He pressed a forearm into Red’s throat until he stopped kicking up a fuss and took a nap for a bit.

Lord knows the poor doc on his case needed it.

 

 

Wade got a shitty wide-ruled notebook from the bodega next to his apartment and started writing down everything he knew about Peter Parker’s past. Before he left the corner store, he also bought new lighter to deal with it when he was done.

He knew that Parker lived with his aunt. Uncle died about eighteen months previous. Kid had never mentioned his mom and dad. Ever, now that Wade thought about it. Not even by mistake.

That was either a social services situation or an unfortunate tragedy situation there. Okay, good. Making headway.

He added Mr. Not-Ben Parker and Mrs. Not-May Parker to his list of suspects.

The kid was bullied, that was pretty obvious from the way he never seemed overly excited about school. Sure, he was excited and bubbly about his friends and he was a nerdy child who loved learning like the ocean loves salt or whatever, but he never talked about what happened in class or at school.

Red was concerned about this. He’d tried to have a bullying talk with the kid once, which started and ended with “Hey, people talking shit get hit, sometimes. And that’s okay, you know?” because sometimes Red was all feeling and no context. The kid had just stared at him in awe and asked if Red had ever fought an alligator.

Wade added “Bully (x2-3?)” to the list.

He chewed on the end of his pen. Those were the most obvious suspects. He had to start moving outside the inner circle now.

There was Stark. Pete spent a hell of a lot of time with Stark and Colonel Rhodes. Rhodes? Nah. Guy was a goody-two-shoes all the way through. His military record was so clean it assaulted the eyes with its radiance.

Stark, though.

Stark was an allegedly reformed womanizer/druggie with a tendency towards hedonism and a penchant for ducking under red tape. Potts, if the media and Pete were to be believed, had a fairly strong handle on him. But Potts didn’t work in the lab with Stark or Rhodes or Pete. Not to mention, May had sanctioned their little internship situation and trusted her kid to Stark twice a week from 2:30 to 5 in the afternoon.

That was 5 hours of unsupervised teamwork per week, right there, if Potts and Rhodes were off doing their real jobs.

Wade’s blood flared.

He added Stark to the list.

Who else? Kid was on Academic Decathlon. He had a coach. Add him to the list.

The kid had jumped up on Wade’s radar after he’d crashed a fucking plane into Coney Island and left his perp in a ring of safety. That guy was pretty big. Add him to the list.

Pete joined Red in beating the shit out of human traffickers and drug dealers and all kinds of Wade’s fellow night stalkers all the time. Any one of them could have gotten handsy with the kid. Fuck. He needed a rubric to screen them against. And access to the police database to see which had been brought in by Spidey. That was doable.

 Probably.

How many people could Spidey have crunched through in like, a year anyways? 100? 200? Fuck. No, okay, let’s see. 2 per night at least, times 365 days minus 21 holidays, and if Pete skipped patrol 2 times per week, that was another 104 days off that number. So that was 240 patrols, give or take, total, and like.

Fuck.

About 500 perps.

Not including the larger rings and gangs.

Jesus, fuck, kiddo. Slow down.

There had to be a better way to do this.

 

 

“I’m sorry, did you say 500? Dopinder, did he say 500?” Weasel called over his shoulder.

“Yes, he said 500,” Dopinder answered from the back room.

“Dude,” Weasel observed, “There’s no way to screen 500 people by hand unless you’re taking a fucking survey or something. What you need is a database and like, filters.”

“I _know_ ,” Wade grumbled. “And I _had_ one, but they keep changing all the security and my old codes don’t work anymore.”

“What are you screening them for anyways?”

“Rape, child abuse, molestation. The usual good stuff.”

“Huh.” Weasel polished a glass that didn’t get cleaner. “Why not just throw it out to this crowd, huh? Maybe they got something?”

Wade looked over his shoulder at the teeming sea of people watching the high stakes billiard game behind him. Someone had thrown their dentures into the pool.

What the hell? He figured.

He climbed up on the bar, while Weasel swore at him, and whistled to get people’s attention. It came, more or less undivided.

“Hey, any of you fucks lay one on Spiderman?” he called.

“Nah, man, he’s too quick,” a voice called from some damn place in the crowd.

“We ain’t fuck with kids, dickface” a giant guy at the table rumbled. A chorus of agreement shuddered through the crowd.

“Who says he’s a kid?” Wade asked.

“Dude, he’s a fucking Keebler elf,” Weasel pointed out behind him, “Anyone who says he’s not a kid is a fucking pedophile.”

Another chorus of agreement.

Well, that settled that.

“Thank you for your service, dear pond-scum,” Wade called. Then scrambled back down to sit at the bar properly. The game went on. Weasel picked up a new unsalvageable glass to polish.

“Why’re you all fixated on Spidey, anyways?” he asked.

Wade stared into his pint.

“Just chasing a feeling,” he said.

 

 

May Parker was very confused but no less thrilled to go out to dinner with Wade. She was a terrifying human being who Wade preferred to avoid at all cost because he never knew what she wanted from him.

Spidey said she didn’t want anything besides to be friends, but he didn’t trust that shit for a second.

Just be friends.

She probably wanted him for his body.

Potentially to eat.

Regardless, he needed information and he was hitting a brick wall here. The cops had caught on to his many attempts to break into their database and had hired someone who actually knew what they were doing to intervene in Wade’s business. Pete’s AcaDec coach had nothing more than a few traffic tickets to his name. Guy seriously needed to get his student debt in order, too. Damn man, c’mon, it’s just gonna keep fucking up your credit the longer you leave it.

There was no breaking into Stark Industries’ security to see if there was any security footage of untoward behavior. There just. Ugh.

It wasn’t possible on Wade’s budget.

This left him with the reasonable solution which was talking to Peter’s aunt. Just because it was reasonable didn’t mean it was desirable, however. If Auntie was as genuinely loving and protective of Spidey as she appeared to be, then this would not be an easy conversation to have. She might get a bit too involved and ahead of herself and that could fuck things up for Wade in future.

He had to be strategic here.

May met him at a low-key café in the city not too far from where she worked because she only had about an hour before she had to be back at the hospital. She was more tired and less peppy than Wade had ever seen her and he decided that that was probably a good thing. The shock wouldn’t be so bad.

She gave him a hug and gushed about how happy she was that Pete had him and Red for mentors and said that he really thought the world of them and told her about them all the time.

He became very uncomfortable.

He kind of wanted to jump through the glass window.

But he nodded along because there was a mission at hand. He waited until their food arrived before he started asking questions.

“May, I don’t mean to, uh, alarm you, but I just wanted to know, has Pete ever mentioned anyone, uh, touching him?”

“Touching him?” May repeated, suddenly dead still and rigid.

Wade cleared his throat.

“Who?” she demanded.

Wade cleared his throat again. This tiny bird woman was giving him fucking goosebumps.

Jesus fuck, get it together man, you were in the special forces.

“Not sure,” he said, “Just a suspicion, nothing concrete—”

“What happened to make you think that,” she asked without asking. She didn’t touch her sandwich and pressed her palms into the tops of her thighs.

Wade didn’t know what to tell her. He didn’t want to lie, per se. This wasn’t a great situation to lie in, especially since she was the kid’s guardian.

“Why, Wade,” she demanded, interrupting his fidgeting.

He kind of crashed through the explanation of he and Red and Pete’s heart to heart the other day and Red’s metaphor and how Peter had maybe, kind of, sort of, implied that someone had held him down without his go ahead and he didn’t want to talk about it.

May stared at the wood of the table without seeing it. She pursed her lips and her eyes flicked back and forth while she went through every person who had ever interacted with her kid in her head.

“He would have told me,” she said firmly. “He tells me everything. We promised. He hasn’t—he wouldn’t—he.” She took a deep breath. “He and Ben were very close before Ben—” she cleared her throat, “There was a moment when we thought maybe someone had done something, but Peter told Ben nothing had happened. He trusted him, he wouldn’t lie to Ben. So, uh. We believed him and he never showed any signs of anything, so yeah. He was fine. It was just us being protective.”

“How about since he started going out?” Wade asked gently, “Have you noticed any changes of behavior? Maybe skittishness? Dislike of touch? Pressure? Volume? Any panic attacks?”

May titled her chin up in confidence.

“He only lied to me for a few months about, well, you know. He tells me things now. And yeah, he’s got some anxious habits, but I’ve got anxiety and his mom had anxiety, so I’ve always thought it was learned or hereditary. He’s scared of uh. He doesn’t like tight places, he gets claustrophobic. That’s the only thing that’s changed. He’s always been that way, but just more so lately. I thought it had to do with him having all that freedom up high, you know?”

Wade had many questions about claustrophobia. Maybe more than May would be comfortable answering or had even had the answers to. He chewed his lip and tried to figure out how to phrase it.

“He’s always been claustrophobic,” he clarified.

“Yes, that’s right.”

“You have any idea where that might have come from?” he asked, “Maybe from before he started living with you and your husband?”

May blinked in shock, then her face went hard.

“No,” she said firmly. “No, his parents would never have done—god no. Never. No. Rich and Mary loved him. They absolutely adored him. Mary was so upset when they dropped him off, she didn’t want to leave him. Rich practically had to drag her away.”

Fucking Dick and Mary. Who the hell names their—focus, Wilson.

“Yeah, sorry. Just, you know. A lot of times it’s the parents with these kinds of things.”

Not that he would know.

“What happened to them, anyways?” he pried a little, “Kid never talks about them.”

May picked at the crust of her sandwich and sighed.

“We don’t know. No one knows. Or if they do, no one’s ever said anything. They worked for this lab and everything was fine. But then one day, Mary called Ben just unbelievably upset and asked us to babysit for a few nights. Peter wasn’t quite three and she said they couldn’t take him to this, uh, work thing they had to do. So of course, we said yes. Ben loved— _loves_ Peter to pieces. Always has. He wanted kids, Ben. But I didn’t and it was kind of a point of contention. Anyways, sorry, I’m getting off track.”

She sighed again.

“They dropped him off and Rich rushed them out the door and we never saw them again. They just vanished. After a week, we realized something had to have happened and we called the police and they did their best. But a couple months went by, and then a couple more and Ben said he, he just knew Rich was gone. He couldn’t describe it, he just knew. After a year, we decided that we didn’t want Pete to go into care. Ben’s parents were pretty frail by then and couldn’t handle a toddler, so we asked Pete if he wanted to live with us until his parents came home and he said he did. But they never came home. We got full custody of him when he was five and we just never looked back, I guess.”

Weird.

Fucking weird.

Spectacularly, conveniently weird.

“So he doesn’t talk about them because?” he asked.

“Because I don’t think he even remembers them. He doesn’t remember what they looked like, we had to show him pictures when he was maybe eight or nine and he didn’t recognize them. And like, by then Ben and I had been mom and dad longer than Rich and Mary. And that’s terrible, but. That’s just. That’s just how it worked out for us.”

No, Wade was pretty sure it wasn’t “just how it worked out” for them. Scientists don’t just rush out in a fucking storm or whatever, leaving their kid behind, because of some work-thing. Nah. Especially when it sounded like Mama Parker knew she wasn’t gonna see her kid ever again.

Uh-uh, honey, that was some conspiracy shit.

“He doesn’t know,” he stated.

“No, he knows. He’s always known,” May said. “But anyways, yes, like I said. If someone hurt him then it wouldn’t have been Rich or Mary. It would have to be someone else, but Wade, listen. I don’t mean to be rude, but Peter would have told me, I swear. I’ll ask him, sensitively, but he would have told me.”

Yikes, no, girl. Do not ask him.

“I don’t think you have to—” he started.

“I’ll let him know you’re worried, he’ll understand.”

No, he fucking won’t.

“Maybe—”

“I’ve got to go now, sorry for the uh, sob story. And thank you for dinner. You should come around for a meal sometime.”

She left, more worried than she had arrived. Wade watched her jog across the street in her scrubs and looked down to glare at his bouncing knee.

Shit was getting complicated.

 

 

“Wade,” Spidey snapped, landing on the meeting roof out of the suit and furious.

Aw, shit, girl. C’mon, why did you have to go and do that?

“You can’t just go behind my back to talk to my aunt.”

Fuck. How to course correct here?

“And for the record, I haven’t been--it’s not--it’s not like that, okay?” Peter was really mad. Cutting himself off in frustration. Wade desperately wished Red wasn’t slamming his head into a pillow somewhere, reopening all his wounds, so that he could perform his usual role as Team Buffer.

“Listen, Pete, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean—”

“To pry into my personal life? Behind my back? To scare my family? To cross my boundaries? Aren’t you and Double D the ones always talking about boundaries?”

“I was worried,” Wade told him solidly. May as well be straightforward about it. It wasn’t like lying was gonna make this one better.

“Worried about what?” Spidey asked, throwing his hands in the air. “That someone had assaulted me? I’m assaulted all the time, Wade. You’re there for half of them. What’s the difference between that and whatever this is?”

Wade chewed his lip because he didn’t want to answer.

Spidey noticed the long pause and dropped his hands. He titled his head and furrowed his brow a little bit.

“Are you protecting me?” he asked.

Wade took a deep breath in and shook his head to clear it.

“Why?” Spidey asked.

Aaaaaagh.

He wasn’t good with putting the right words in the right order. He was only good with the words bit and only when it didn’t matter.

“Are you protecting Double D, too?” Spidey asked.

“No,” Wade managed to say, “He’s. He can take care of himself. He’s already. Ugh. Listen, Pete, it’s just me being a paranoid, vengeful shithead, okay? That’s all this is. And you’re right. I totally fucked up, shouldn’t have talked to your aunt. Shoulda just left it alone.”

“Did someone,” the kid stopped, then started again, “Did someone hurt you like that, Wade? Like that guy hurt Double D?”

He blew out his lungful of air and decided, aw, fuck it. May as well lean into it. They’d at least be even that way, given what he now knew about the kid’s family situation.

“Yeah,” he said, “Yeah, when I was. Yeah.”

“When you were a kid,” Peter observed, “Like me?”

“It’s not fucking okay, Pete,” Wade told him, in a rush all of the sudden, super agitated, “It’s not fucking okay. People out there just fucking take what they want from kids because they can. Because no one asks any questions. Because no one who matters asks any questions or gets any answers. Shit’s fucked up. I’m fucked up from that shit and Red’s fucked up from that shit. And the last thing I want is for you to end up fucked up like us because no one gave enough of a shit to ask around, even if there was nothing there. It’s just. I just. I’m paranoid, you know? It’s part of the paranoia or something.”

Peter’s face wasn’t frowning anymore. Wade didn’t understand.

Why was he smiling? What the fuck was there to smile about?

“What,” he demanded. “Go on, yell or whatever. I’m not gonna—”

“Thank you,” Spidey said.

 

Wait.

 

What.

 

He squinted to make sure the kid wasn’t in some kind of secret hostage situation where someone was feeding him words. No laser pointers anywhere. No sign of a wire. Nothing flesh-colored painted on his skin. Maybe they’d hooked it up in his jacket?

“It wasn’t a person,” Peter told him. Picking his way over through the trash on the roof and sitting down with his feet over the side of it, just a foot or so from where Wade was standing. “The Vulture dropped a building on me. I mean right on me. And everyone left and I was there by myself.” His voice got softer the longer he spoke.

Wade cautiously sat down next to him.

“He left you there? Under--?”

“Tons of concrete. It had to be tons. I didn’t have the suit, Mr. Stark took it away for me being irresponsible, so I didn’t know what to do and no one heard me when I—” Peter swallowed. He shook himself and steeled his jaw. “But I got out. I got it off. And I stopped the Vulture. And everything ended happily ever after?”

He smiled at Wade, proud of himself for having not cried.

Wade didn’t know what the fuck to say.

He’d thought this was a people issue.

He could fix a people issue.

This shit? The claustrophobia. Helplessness. No one to hear you fucking scream.

“Come here,” he said.

Peter edged over and leaned into the hug. Wade rested his chin on the top of the kid’s head and tried to keep himself in the moment, tried to keep himself from sliding off into horror and rage. The weight of the kid’s head on his collarbone helped.

“Thank you,” Peter said again.

“Stop saying that,” Wade told him.

“For caring enough to ask all the wrong questions,” Peter continued. “I’ll tell you, though. Whatever you want to know, next time, you just have to ask.”

Wade didn’t know what the fuck to say. Again. This kid kept surprising him. Was fucking up his reputation as the Merc with the Mouth.

Peter pulled out of his embrace and smiled wide, like nothing had happened. Like Wade hadn’t just overstepped like eight different boundaries.

“Hey, did Double D really fight a firefighter?”

It took Wade off guard and he laughed.

“What? No. Where’d you hear that shit? Nah, but he _is_ waging a one-man war on Metro-General.”

Peter giggled but gave away no secrets.

“I’m gonna get him a plant.”

Wade snorted.

“He’s gonna throw it at you.”

“S’alright. I’ll duck.”

Man, this fucking kid.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> for anyone concerned, Matt is totally fine. He's not hurt by Wade doing his thing, he's just being dramatic and irritable and scaring the staff. Foggy takes him home the next day.


End file.
